Sunetos, Inc.

T-33 Thinking about putting game idea on back burner to work on idea with a colleague

dwsjoquist — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:41:27 +0000

I had a conversation today with a friend that I work with regularly in my day job. We had talked a couple of months ago about an iPhone app idea that we both believed had merit. After our conversation today, I am beginning to think it is the right time to at least build a prototype.

My thought process has been something like this:

By continuing with my idea, I will keep my focus and steady progress will eventually produce a product I am pleased with. But even with overly optimistic estimates of available time, I will not have something ready for the app store in the next month
Some of my game ideas could benefit from a few weeks of gestation
I still have much to learn about OpenGL game development, and what I learn at 360iDev in San Jose will be good leverage in further development
I am much more comfortable with UIKit development (non-OpenGL), and could produce a workable prototype for the joint idea much more quickly
My game (so far) is a solo endeavor, the other app would be a joint effort which should help keep me on track
The scope of the joint idea is narrow enough that we can have something in the app store much sooner than I could on my own

I haven’t lost interest or hope in my game idea, but tonight I will spend my development time playing around with the other idea.

Day T-33 Accomplishments (Tuesday, March 9, 2010)

Consider options for how to spend my limited iPhone development time

T-35 to T-34 Spent too long in the weeds of one particular detail

dwsjoquist — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:31:23 +0000

I got fixated on a particular calculation Monday evening, and ended up spending too much time figuring out something that I most likely will not use. By the end of my session on Monday it was working, but I should have bypassed the issue until I was sure I needed to finish it.

Day T-35 to T-34 Accomplishments (Sunday-Monday, March 7-8, 2010)

Finished a task that probably did not need to be finished

T-38 to T-36 A fun detour with my son

dwsjoquist — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:29:11 +0000

The first week of March was spring break for my college son, so we spent time at family in Florida, then Alabama (both were a little cooler than normal.) He had been hard at work sketching and thinking about his game idea during the break, and during the last part of the week, I got to help by building a prototype for him to try various combinations of game gestures and timings. It was fun working together on it, and well worth the diversion of my iphone dev time.

Day T-38 to T-36 Accomplishments (Thursday-Saturday, March 4-6, 2010)

Spent time with my son on his game idea
Developed a simple prototype to test gestures for his idea

T-39 After a couple of hours, I am back on track again

dwsjoquist — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:13:45 +0000

I narrowed down my memory problem to an extra release of a custom property, but it took me too long to find it. It is a little frustrating that my Objective-C debugging skills feel so far behind those I have in the Java world.

I tried several different methods of tracking down the extra release, but the simplest method proved effective–double checking every possible reference to the property by visual inspection. I need to find better methods for this sort of thing, but for now I am back on track.

Day T-39 Accomplishments (Wednesday, March 3, 2010)

Found the double release error causing me grief

T-40 Only a minor effort on Tuesday

dwsjoquist — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:05:19 +0000

I didn’t spend much time on iPhone on Tuesday.

Day T-40 Accomplishments (Tuesday, March 2, 2010)

Not much

T-41 Some quality head banging time today, stuck on a memory issue

dwsjoquist — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:18:35 +0000

I so dearly love memory management problems — they are always so easy to find and fix…sure. I had a couple of hours of focused time this evening for development work, but unfortunately wasted the last half trying to find a memory allocation bug.

In some recent refactoring I introduced a double release somehow, but after an hour of late evening head banging, I could not find it and decided the wisest course of action was to drop it for the evening — hopefully I will find and fix the issue within the first little bit of my next session. I believe I at least know when I introduced the bug, so hopefully this will be another demonstration of “version control software is my friend”.

Day T-41 Accomplishments (Monday, March 1, 2010)

Remembered there is a point where it’s best to just put down the keyboard and walk away

T-42 A bookish day

dwsjoquist — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:10:31 +0000

I did no coding on Sunday, but did get comfortable on the couch with a couple of development books:

iPhone Game Development, Zirkle & Hogue
Mobile 3D Graphics with OpenGL ES and M3G, Pulli, etal

Day T-42 Accomplishments (Sunday, February 28, 2010)

Spent a couple of hours with some iPhone development books

T-43 Made great progress along I-75 today

dwsjoquist — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:59:02 +0000

I had to choose one of two goals for today: better material handling, or better movement processing. In thinking through what each meant, I realized that the better material handling is really dependent on smarter movement processing so I dove in. We are almost to my brother’s house, but I finished the core refactoring that should provide more efficient handling of movement, better coverage that will support the material handling better, and simplification of several classes.

Day T-43 Accomplishments (Saturday, February 27, 2010)

Simplified movement handling
Provided good basis for material handling improvements

T-44 It’s all downhill from here

dwsjoquist — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:34:40 +0000

I am heading out of town on a two week trip, visiting family in Florida for a week, then on to Alabama to help my daughter and her husband move to a new house. I have enough work commitments that I’ll probably try to get in 60-70% of my normal consulting work hours, but I also hope to elicit some good feedback on my app (and continue making progress!). It is far enough along that I can explain where I am going, have folks try it, make some changes, etc. It will also be a sanity check on what they think the “fun” factor is.

A key part of the game involves digging with tools of different shapes and sizes. I want the tool face (width of a shovel, bucket, etc.) to rotate to be perpendicular to the current direction of the touch movement, and tonight I got that behavior working correctly. As you move around, the screen is updated as I expected.

Next on my list of things to accomplish is a more realistic movement of material. Currently, the tool picks up material along the path of movement, but without limits–a shovel with infinite capacity. I have placeholders for capacity and some reasonable ideas of how to handle it–perhaps tomorrow.

Day T-44 Accomplishments (Friday, February 26, 2010)

Finished tool rotation code, it now correctly stays perpendicular to direction of motion

T-45 Mid-point, no major changes in direction, just pressing onward

dwsjoquist — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:20:21 +0000

I didn’t spend a lot of time evaluating things at the mid-point — my natural tendency is to over analyze, so I’m going to give it a quick check:

Progress is not as fast as I had hoped, but I *am* making progress
I over-estimated my available time, but I have not been that far off the mark overall–I just need to be disciplined with the time I have
I do not know if I will have my app in the store before 360iDev, but I’m not discouraged–it will be done when it’s done
I over-reached a bit early on, but I think I’m doing a reasonable job of keeping over-analysis and feature-creep at bay

My project is a game that involves digging motions where you push material around with touches. Today I modified my tool handling to start taking into account the direction of the movement. I added code for rotations as well as decent unit tests, but still have some odd behavior with the gestures–fixing that behavior will have to wait until Friday.

Day T-45 Accomplishments (Thursday, February 25, 2010)

Added tool rotation code to gesture handling